Almost There!

This week's photo theme: Variations on the Group Photo

August 14, 2014

Well folks yet another week has passed by down here in Mexico. Things are starting to get real! Every day starting tomorrow until I leave has some sort of "last" thing during the day that i get to look forward to. Tomorrow's our last service project, then it's our last day with our older districts before they leave, then it's our last Sunday before its actually our last Sunday (that one's a stretch I know, but cut me some slack) and then every day after that is our last Monday or Tuesday or whatever until I leave in 11 days! I know it's still over a week away, but Vegas has felt closer than ever and I am just itching to get there and start working. Next Thursday when I email home I'll be like 4 days from the field, I'm so pumped and anxious and excited and nervous and ready and unprepared and everything and that is pretty much the summary of Mission Life. Everything on the mission is either an extreme high or low. In fact, Grandma sent me a poem about that that Aunt Alison had on her mission and i felt its summarized by experience so far perfectly. 

So I think I'll start off with what I felt was the coolest thing about this past week and also what was my biggest accomplishment. So I've been struggling with the whole "When am I going to hit the point on the mission where I'm comfortable and I love the work and I can lose myself in it and the months just start flying by?" I figured that since I am going to be speaking Spanish the whole time, something I need to accomplish before I can hit that point is I need to know Spanish. So last week I heard this quote from a mission president to his missionaries that if you read the entire Book of Mormon, asking for a specific blessing, he promised that by the time that you finished the book you will have received the blessing. On top of that I hear that many people talk about how reading the Book of Mormon out loud in your mission language is the single best way to learn it, and that by the time you finish reading it you will be just about, if not totally, fluent in your language. So I heard those and it really struck me. So last Pday night I started reading El Libro De Mormón out loud in Español. I had decided that my goal would be that by the time I left for Vegas, I wanted to 200 pages into the book. Well, last night I finished Mosiah. In the past week I have read every word, on every page, out loud, in Spanish, for over 250 pages. I genuinely feel I might be able to read the entire thing before I even leave this place. 

Here's the coolest part about this experience, though. On my like 3rd day of doing this challenge, I was outside doing my pacing and reading aloud in this park area in the CCM, when I got the feeling that I should kneel down in prayer and actually ask Heavenly Father myself for this blessing to be bestowed upon me for reading the book. So I knelt down in the grass and offered a prayer. I told Heavenly Father that as an act of faith I was going to read every word of the Libro de Mormón out loud, and I asked for a blessing that as I read my eyes and ears and mouth and mind would pick up the patterns and grammar and vocabulary of Spanish and that the more I read, the more fluent I would get. The insane part is, as I was praying for that and as I asked that by the time I finished that I would be blessed with a fluency in Spanish, I was overcome with this amazing feeling. It felt like a wave rushing over my body. I got tears in my eyes, but I felt happy. I genuinely felt that that was God's way of saying he would accept my act of Faith and I truly feel, because of what I felt then, that in a little over 400 pages from now, I am going to be fluent in Spanish. If that doesn't help you believe that prayer is real, then I don't know what will. Actually I do, it's praying for yourself. You should go try it. It's amazing.

So that was my biggest thing about this past week and I am still working on my quest of reading the whole thing out loud. I ask for your prayers for Ashley, Jake and me as we all try to learn new languages to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in.  

Other cool stuff. I gave a talk this last week in Sacrament meeting entirely in Spanish and about the importance of baptism. I started it off by talking about how awesome my family is and how I've got a cousin and a sister and a brother who are all also serving missions the same time I am. People thought that was super cool. 

I got some more letters this week! Thank you to Mom for sending me Sam Ferris' homecoming talk. Please tell him thank you for me because that talk was amazing and I hope I can be a missionary like he was someday. Also thank you to Aunt Angela, MomMom, and Grandma for the Dear Elders and letters! I loved reading them. And shout out to MomMom for the package. I forgot to mention it last time. The note was sweet and my district loved the treats!

My umbrella has magically disappeared, which is great because it rains at least once a day here. 

Two funny stories. During class one day we were role playing a lesson as an entire class. Basically the premise was this: we were teaching a man who had lost a child recently and we needed to explain that he can be with his son again and all the great stuff about the Plan of Salvation. Anyways, the elder in my district who was playing the part of  the investigator was talking to the class in character. He had decided that his kid's name was Thomas. So when he was telling us about his son he said "Tómas es... No más" and it rhymed perfectly and he started laughing right after he said it and then everyone was laughing and it was muy comico. 

Second story is from my first week here but I forgot to write about it. We were practicing describing our families and we had to come up with a phrase about our mom and dad that everyone else had to take turns repeating. Long story short, the two phrases I came up with that everyone had to say were "Elder Alley tiene el mejór madre en del mundo y su Padré no es Catolicó". I don't know what inspired that, but everyone now knows that I have the best mom in the world, and that my dad isn't Catholic. Both are true, though, so give me credit. 

Ok sorry for writing so much, but a lot happens down here and it's very relaxing and stress relieving to me to be able to feel like I get to talk to my family while I'm writing this. 

Mother and Father: I have two requests. One is for everyone, and the other is only for you two. I would like, if you have the time to be able to do this, for you (and everyone else who would like to join) to compile a "pump up" email for me and send it to me for my next Pday. Basically, it's like a rev up email for the field. Since a week from now is my last Pday, I would love to read a bunch of emails that contain stuff that just gets me excited to get out there. If you could look up all the stuff you can specifically about the Las Vegas West mission that you think I would be excited to hear or if you could have anyone that knows people that live there or know anything about the area or the mission itself that could write me and get me excited to get to Vegas, that'd be great. 

Also if any RMs out there could write to me about the differences from the MTC to the Field, stuff that I should know and stuff that I can look forward to as I finally get out there in two weeks, that'd be awesome, too.  It would be so great to be able to read a lot of stuff right before I get to Vegas, that just gets me excited to get to my mission specifically and to the field in general. I know that's a lot to ask for, but if it could happen it would make the big transition I have coming up a little bit easier and it would just put me in a great mood. Thanks!

As for the thing I would like you and Dad to do, it's really simple. You don't have to do this next week if you spend a lot of time finding information about my mission for me, but for the rest of my mission I would love it if you could do this. I've been told many times that the best way to bless your family is to serve a mission. Right now our family has two missionaries serving full time, and soon 3 in October. I would love it, and I know it would keep me motivated to stay out here and work hard, if as part of your email to me every week, you could include the blessings you have seen in the past week in yours or Dad's or Aubrey's or anyone in the family's lives that you think have resulted from having missionaries out in the field with the name "Alley" on their name tag. You can do as many or as little blessings you see as you like. But I thought it'd be cool if you mention at least two a week while me and Ashley are full time, and then bump it up to 3 a week when Michael leaves. Heck you, Dad, and Aubrey could all share one blessing you've seen each week and that would make 3!

I know this email is super long, and I know that I have asked a lot from you guys. If your lives are too busy to do any of that I completely understand, but I would love it if these things could happen. Anyway, once again let me end by saying that I know this Church is True. I have gained renewed testimonies this last week of prayer and of The Book Of Mormon. I know that God listens to our prayers. I know he answers them through the Book of Mormon. I know we have a living prophet on the earth right now and his name is Thomas S. Monson. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and my Redeemer and that only through him can I receive Eternal Life. I know these things to be true and I testify of them in the name of our older brother, Jesus Christ. Amen. 

La Iglesia es Verdad, Mucho Amor,

Elder Alley